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"Well, you try it, anyway. Some other prisoners has done it."

"One er dem big cat-tail-lookin' mullen-stalks would grow in heah, Mars Tom,

I reck'n, but she wouldn' be wuth half de trouble she'd coss."

"Don't you believe it. We'll fetch you a little one, and you plant it in the

corner, over there, and raise it. And don't call it mullen, call it Pitchiola --

that's its right name, when it's in a prison. And you want to water it with your

tears."

"Why, I got plenty spring water, Mars Tom."

"You don't want spring water; you want to water it with your tears. It's

the way they always do." ssssssssss

"Why, Mars Tom, I lay I kin raise one er dem mullen-stalks twyste wid

spring water whiles another man's a start'n one wid tears."

"That ain't the idea. You got to do it with tears."

"She'll die on my han's, Mars Tom, she sholy will; kase I doan' skasely ever

cry."

So Tom was stumped. But he studied it over, and then said Jim would have

to worry along the best he could ssssssssss

with an onion. He promised ssssssssss

he would go to the nigger cabins ssssssssss

and drop one, private, in Jim's ssssssssss

coffee-pot, in the morning. Jim ssssssssss

said he would "jis' 's soon have ssssssssss

tobacker in his coffee;" and found ssssssssss

so much fault with it, and with ssssssssss

the work and bother of raising ssssssssss

the mullen, and jews-harping the ssssssssss

rats, and petting and flattering ssssssssss

up the snakes and spiders and ssssssssss

things, on top of all the other ssssssssss

work he had to do on pens, and ssssssssss

inscriptions, and journals, and things, which made it more trouble and worry and

responsibility to be a prisoner than anything he ever undertook, that Tom most

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